November 30, 2021 — Results from two annual surveys in the northern Bering Sea this summer, one using bottom trawl and one using a surface trawl, show a decline in sea temperatures since the 2019 survey. Last year’s surveys, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’ Fisheries branch, were cancelled due to Covid-19. This year’s surveys showed the precipitous drop in snow crab and “large declines in the Bering Sea include walleye pollock, saffron cod, and various types of jellyfish.”
The presentations, reported by KNOM.org on November 10 and November 19, were part of the Strait Sciences program presented via Zoom reported Marion Trujillo of KNOM.
The surveys cover a grid from Cape Wales, the westernmost point on the North American mainland in the Bering Strait south to Nunivak Island, west of Bethel, AK.
“At this moment we’ve been in a very long stanza for warming. But we’ve dropped down a little bit. Both not only on the bottom temperatures but the surface temperatures. And I think there’s kind of a hope that maybe we are going to see us go into a cold stanza for a while, and start to cool down the Southeastern Bering Sea. But, this might also just be a little bit of variation, and (it will) jump back up. Next year is going to tell us a whole lot about what is happening,” NOAA research scientist Lyle Britt said in the presentation.